*OT* Article in today's Heard on the Net (WSJ) on SI and Tom Taulli....
John
Split Between Silicon
Investor
And Analyst Spurs
Acrimony
By JASON ANDERS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL INTERACTIVE EDITION
Silicon Investor and its frequently quoted market analyst abruptly
severed ties this week in an acrimonious split between the
financial discussion forum and the man who generated significant
publicity for the site.
Tom Taulli says he was fired late
Monday from his job as a writer and
market analyst for the Web site. A
spokesman for Go2Net, Silicon
Investor's parent company, will say
only that Mr. Taulli no longer works for Go2Net, but declines to
say whether he was fired.
What's more, Mr. Taulli says the company on Monday also
canceled stock options on 34,000 shares, after accounting for a
stock split, that could have been worth $2.5 million based on
Go2Net's closing stock price of $84 Thursday. The Go2Net
spokesman declines to comment on Mr. Taulli's compensation.
Mr. Taulli says he plans to fight to have the options reinstated.
Mr. Taulli says he was told he was being let go because of a
dispute over a vacation he took in Hawaii last week. Company
officials contend Mr. Taulli left town without warning them he
would be away, he says.
Mr. Taulli wrote a daily column for Silicon
Investor and a weekly column for
StockSite, another Go2Net unit. He says
part of his role as a Silicon Investor
columnist -- and a significant reason the
site wanted to hire him -- was to act as a
market analyst for media inquiries.
Indeed, Mr. Taulli has been quoted in scores of stories -- mostly
about initial public offerings -- since he began writing for Silicon
Investor in July 1998, giving the site valuable publicity.
For its part, Go2Net says Mr. Taulli wasn't an official employee,
but rather a free-lancer with the title of "market analyst for Silicon
Investor."
Mr. Taulli says he was shocked to learn about his termination.
"Up until Monday night, there was no complaint, no warning," Mr.
Taulli says. "We had a real good relationship."
Mr. Taulli, 30 years old, has become something of a celebrity in
the IPO market, often popping up in newspaper stories and on
television to talk about hot new offerings. But he acknowledges
his rise to fame originally had more to do with media interest than
with his talents as an analyst. He says he hasn't had much formal
training in investment banking, except for an undergraduate
degree in finance, and says he learned most of what he knows
just by poking around the Internet.
After college, Mr. Taulli worked briefly as
a broker for Baraban Securities, which
was acquired in 1997 by InterFirst
Capital, of Los Angeles. He bounced
around between a few jobs before going
back to school, and during his second
year of law school he started a Web site
where he occasionally published his
thoughts on IPOs. His writing drew the
attention of some financial sites, and in
1997 he began working as a spokesman for IPO Monitor, a
Calabasas, Calif., firm.
"It started slow, but late last year it really took off and I was getting
a ton of calls" from reporters, Mr. Taulli says. "Soon I was on
CNN."
The media attention is what got him the job with Silicon Investor,
he says, but his complex relationship with Go2Net started earlier.
He began working as a regular columnist for Go2Net's StockSite
in October 1997. At the time, he was writing a market analysis
column for TechWeb (www.techweb.com), a job he still holds.
TechWeb is owned by CMP Media, a Manhasset, N.Y., publisher.
Mr. Taulli says that as compensation for that work he was given
options to buy, adjusting for a stock split, 1,500 shares of Go2Net
stock at $1.50 a share (the stock was trading around $4 at the
time). He says he exercised those options on Tuesday and sold
the stock -- his first opportunity after learning he had been fired --
for a net profit of $121,500.
"I didn't want to waste any time, given what had happened with
my other options," he says.
Mr. Taulli sold his remaining Go2Net stock -- 6,300 shares -- later
in the week for about $531,000. The stock was part of
compensation he received for his work with yet another Web site,
HyperMart, which Go2Net bought in August 1998. HyperMart
provides free Web pages to businesses.
Mr. Taulli says the only compensation he has received from
Go2Net for his work at Silicon Investor is about $1,000 in cash,
which was part of a $500-a-month salary agreement that went
into effect at the beginning of the year, and severance pay of
$200.
Going forward, Mr. Taulli says he will continue to write for
TechWeb and has started a new part-time writing job for a
Ziff-Davis Web site. Meanwhile, a book he has written, "Investing
in IPOs," was recently published by Bloomberg Personal
Bookshelf.
He says he also plans on concentrating more of his energy on a
company he recently founded, Examweb.com, which makes
test-preparation software for bar exams.
Write to Jason Anders at jason.anders@ne |
